AHS Views

This week in Michigan, an 18 year old woman drug dealer sold heroin to a 24 year old man, who later died from what was determined to be a drug overdose. The man was an addict, not a first-time user, who apparently was stuck in a pretty serious drug addiction.

The young woman was arrested shortly after his death and is now being charged on two counts, “delivering a drug causing death and delivery of heroin”. The maximum punishment for these two counts is life in prison. Could you imagine? You’re a drug dealer (and quite possibly an addict as well) one day, and the next, you’re in jail for the rest of your life. And, to top it off, you’re only 18 years old! Just a kid…

I absolutely think that there should be consequences for dealing heroin. It’s against the law, it kills people left and right and it’s an inhumane choice of profession. With that said, who should be held accountable for the addict’s death? I’d have to say it was ultimately the addict who took his own life through the use of illegal drugs.

There are so many people out there who experiment with and use heroin (or other harmful illegal drugs) and ruin their lives and those of their families every day. It’s a poor choice that they make that leads them down a very bad path. There isn’t a single good reason to choose that life. But, they choose it for themselves and it’s their responsibility.

So, should the young woman spend the rest of her life in prison for killing the addict? Or should she spend time in jail for dealing illegal drugs? It’s a tough choice for law enforcement officials who obviously don’t want people to die of drug overdoses and they don’t want to send messages to other drug dealers to lessen the severity of this type of crime. I’d say that she should be punished, of course, but she didn’t kill the young man. He did that on his own, and now his family is left without him and mourning their loss. My condolences go out to them.

Did you know that half of all Americans take at least one prescription drug? And that one in six Americans take three or more prescriptions? That seems extreme, but would explain why prescription drug abuse has become such an epidemic in the US right now.

So what happens if you take one or a couple of prescriptions on a daily basis and you accidentally take the wrong pill? Believe it or not, this is pretty common amongst us busy-bodied Americans who are usually on the go for most of our daily routines.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, since the year 2000, they’ve received over 95,000 reports of medication errors. Some of which were by medical professionals like pharmacists and the doctors who write the prescriptions, but mostly by the consumers.

With all of the different types of medications being prescribed out there, and families loading up their medicine cabinets with pill bottles, tubes of prescription creams and perhaps some liquid medications, how hard do you think it would be to accidentally take the wrong pill?

It’s very important to keep your medications in order and not to get them mixed up. The consequences could range from annoying symptoms due to taking the wrong medication, to more serious effects like allergic reactions or overdose. It’s also important to properly dispose of medications that are no longer being used. Sometimes people think it’s handy to hang onto prescriptions “just in case” they’re needed. But, what they’re really doing is opening the door to misuse by minors or self medicating, possibly with the wrong medications.

While we as a nation are dealing with the issue of prescription drug addiction, let’s keep in mind that we need to be responsible with the drugs that are medically necessary to live our lives. And, if you do know of someone who is misusing those types of drugs, get them some help. You could absolutely be saving their life!

Methadone is commonly given to heroin addicts (as well as morphine and other opioid users) to “treat” their dependence and withdrawal symptoms. It is prescribed to addicts every day, all over the US. It’s considered a way of helping people to get past their addiction and dependence to illegal street drugs.

The unfortunate thing about methadone is that it’s just as addicting, if not more so, than the heroin that they were shooting up, snorting or smoking. Once patients are given methadone, they just keep getting prescribed. This can go on for years and years – it’s called methadone maintenance.

What’s really fascinating to me is that it takes about a week to get through heroin detox. And, it can be done with other means, like vitamins, healthy diet, other alternative drugs that are less addicting and much easier to wean off of (in some cases), and the patient can fully rid their body of the powerful drug.

My question is, why on earth would you want to move to a different addictive drug, to become a slave to and dependent on, instead of a week of heroin detox? It has also been proven that methadone detox can be worse for patients than that of heroin. Would you really want to go stand in line for your methadone every day for years and years?

If I really take a look at this problem, it would appear that most people make the switch from the illegal drugs to methadone because it’s offered as “help” to addicts from the government. And, while I believe that the intentions are not horrible, the solution that has been put in place certainly is.

What if, and this is a big what if, the government used the resources that pay for methadone, to actually provide detox and addiction help facilities for addicts instead of drugging them? If you want to stop taking heroin, you go to treatment and properly go through the steps of drug detox and then drug rehab. What a concept, right? To actually get people fully off of drugs…

If you’ve ever found yourself looking for detox or rehab services, especially state funded programs, I’m sure you’ve experienced trouble locating an open bed. I personally hear the heartbreaking stories of families who don’t have enough money for private pay rehab, who have no options, on a daily basis. What’s available to the opioid addicts? Currently the answer is more drugs.